How Words are Formed

Six women arrive at the table. Cup remnants of
waking dreams in crowded, dissipating wisps,
faceless characters and confusing maps. We arrive to decipher
together, mouth groggy snippets over biscuits and bacon.

Outside, snow that could just sigh. We've returned to our
previous seats. Forks placed to the left or tossed collectively
into the center.

Last night we drank at this table, over Scrabble tiles.
Making up rules. This morning, one early riser
emerges from the day's weather. Sock monkey with down
on her brown cap.

We start a new game.

Acronyms are not acceptable, we decide. Directions
no where to be found. I slowly stir my drink.

Another undresses to hot tub on this vacation patch of
Colorado cottonwood and pine. Red cars turn white
in the driveway. We reach for the names and favorite
sayings of bygone partners as if a clue inside. How we
arrived here.

Fortunes scripted on our tea bags. One continues
to whip farm fresh eggs.

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Shameless Early Promotion

My poetry book, The Fiction of Stillness, is available for pre-order now on Barnes and Noble. Official release date August 1st, 2024. Here's a taste: ... The table is smooth and round symmetric The chairs are haphazardly placed at the end of this day I have breast cancer I say into the receiver [communities must] pool resources How to produce the sounds of the imaging report into sentences that resonate with months of postponement weighty contrast on my right side computing and comparing IM ratios for greater insight not sufficient to prove the efficacy of screening ...

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I remember arriving, not the prettiest but appealing to certain bards in the back room, entering through the Castro Valley corner door, walking the postage stamp sized Cinzano bar curated by a man from Detroit who named his establishment after a certain French elephant in a children’s book I arrive with budding consciousness around politically correct solidarity for disheveled neighbors, entering the cigarette lit night rising to tin siding ceiling to floor thumping insistence Bruce and Joie and David and Laura and John, their ash and sweat accumulating as I waited patiently for my place on the crumpled sign-up sheet Today, three decades later, I sit in a Santa Fe gallery named simply Here, and a poet reads to us of roadrunners and a bear and a continuation of the call for preservation of our environment There is an otherworldly hum outside the window of leaded glass The owner sidles up behind me and pushes the fr...

As Mourning Doves Persist

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